Written Project for a scholarship application offered by myvisasource.com :

In response to David Suzuki’s comments during an interview with “L’Express”, a French-Canadian magazine, regarding Canadian immigration I would have to say that I strongly disagree with his statement that Canada is “full” and should be closed to all non-emergent immigrants. I understand Suzuki’s environmental concern, claiming that Canada’s “usable land is reduced” and that our government accepts immigrating professionals despite knowing that they are in dire need of them in their native countries, only to boost the Canadian economy. However, my personal opinion is that the Canadian immigration system should be left as it is, allowing those who wish to immigrate into our country to freely do so.

Today we have such a globalized world, where people have many personal, professional and political international relationships, and I believe that closing the doors to the second largest country in the world due to it’s inability to sustain a larger population would be completely preposterous. Through personal experiences I have had a first hand look at the immigration regulations in Germany and the EU, therefore I cannot begin to imagine that Canada with a population of approximately 35 million could refuse future immigrants when Germany, a country nearly 28 times smaller than Canada and with a population of over 81 million, continues to welcome them into their country. I believe that the difference is that Germany has taken many steps to maintain environmental safety. I would encourage Canada to try to introduce more “green” options into society that could help keep our beautiful and nature rich country intact.

Canada is known throughout the world as an extremely multicultural and accepting country. I find that for a well known environmentalist to speak-out against our immigration system to be very disappointing, and can understand how he attracted many controversial responses. I hope that the Vancouver native, who was interned into Canadian camps for people of Japanese origin during World War II, has since come to realize that a strong economy and a welcoming hand to immigrants is in the best interest of our country, and that we need to find solutions other than tightening immigration laws to help maintain our environment. I respect that Suzuki, as well as everyone else, is entitled to their own opinions and beliefs, and I think that is in itself an example of Canadian compassion and acceptance. I believe that the environmental stress within our country is not due to the fact that Canadians are too many in number and to diverse in background, but that all Canadians need to listen to environmentalists like Suzuki’s ideas on conserving our resources through environmentally sustaining methods.

To address Suzuki’s claim that “we pillage the countries of the south by depriving them of their future professionals”, I would like to say that it is not for the Canadian government to choose whether people should be forced to stay in their native countries, when they wish to explore their options in other parts of the world. I believe that we are all free to choose which living conditions we want to endure and where we wish to raise our families. Therefore, in restricting immigration laws, Canada would not be helping southern countries keep their professionals, but rather they would just ensure that the Canadian economy would not benefit from helping these people come to a country they would rather be a contributing part of society to. I think that these people denied access to Canada would simply immigrate elsewhere, resulting in a lost opportunity for Canada. In that account, the solution to helping other countries keep their citizens would not be to deny them access to Canada, but to help build an international alliance where Canada could encourage people to stay in their native countries by guiding their government to act in the best interest of it’s citizens and to create job opportunities however it can, for example by encouraging Canadian tourists in said country’s direction.

David Suzuki is a highly respected Canadian environmentalist and I appreciate the work he has done and continues to do, to benefit our country. These particular comments do not reflect my personal opinion on immigration regulations, however I believe that his words came from a good-natured place. I suspect that Suzuki’s passion for the environment resulted in him claiming that he would approved the closing of Canada’s doors to future immigrants. As a minority himself and a lover of our environment, I believe that Suzuki has nothing against immigrants. He reminisced in the same interview with “L’Express” on one of his proudest moments to be Canadian, “when Canada offered refuge to 50,000 boat people in Vietnam in the 1970s”. Canada is a very strong country, and being a native of British Columbia myself, I know just how much Canadians love our environment and living in such a vast and naturally abundant country. I have no fear or anxiety concerning the potential destruction of our country’s environment, because I know that Canadians will step up and due what they can to conserve their country’s resources. Suzuki and fellow environmentalists, with the help of our government, need only to continue to inform Canadians and future immigrants on what they can do to help the environment and to take the necessary steps in conserving our country as the population grows and the urbanization of the environment expands.